Course Description

This course will teach you how to redesign an organization’s business model and make it future-proof for the long term. In an increasingly interconnected world, organizations are confronted with unprecedented levels of turbulence, uncertainty, and complexity. Global trends such as rapid urbanization, climate change, global economic power shifts, digitalization influence the effectiveness and efficiency of existing business models. To ensure future competitive success, organizations must rethink the way they create, deliver, and capture value. In this course, you will learn how to design a future-proof business model in three steps.

• Analyze. First, you will learn to describe the current business model of an existing organization and put it into context. You will draw a causal loop diagram that shows how different business model elements are causally interrelated. You will use these insights to identify potentially viable business model adaptations.
• Anticipate. In the next phase of the course, you will learn how managers can make decisions when they are confronted with various uncertainties about the future. You will develop different scenarios to understand how potential internal and external developments impact the organization.
• Advise. Finally, you will learn how to use your analysis and anticipation skills to give advice to organizations about business model innovation. You will use wind tunneling techniques to identify robust business model adaptations that are most likely to create, deliver, or capture value in the future.

Learning Goals

After this course, students will be able to…

• Understand the concept of business model innovation in public and private organizations
• Describe the organization’s ecosystem and identify existing and potential complementarities
• Represent a business model with a causal loop diagram describing the causal interrelationships between internal and external factors
• Distinguish between relevant and irrelevant forces for scenarios
• Create scenarios and describe possible futures
• Propose business model changes and analyze their potential impact
• Apply wind tunneling techniques to test the robustness of potential business model changes
• Identify robust business model changes that are most likely to create, deliver, or capture value in the future and defend your choice with solid argumentation
• Write a well-structured report to an organization’s management team with convincing argumentation for a new, future-proof business model

Course Schedule

Part 1: Introduction

• Introduction to Business Model Innovation
  Lecturer(s): Stefan Breet

• Trends, Threats, and Grand Challenges: Navigating the Perks and Pitfalls of Societal Change
  Lecturer(s): Stefan Breet

Part 2: Analyze

• Creating Value in Business Ecosystems: How to Leverage Non-Generic Complementarities
  Lecturer(s): Stefan Breet

• Defining the Right Problem: A Critical First Step in the BMI Process
  Lecturer(s): Stefan Breet & Vincent Marchau

• Using Causal Loop Diagrams to Capture Dynamic Relationships between Business Models Elements
  Lecturer(s): Merel van der Wal

• Application of Causal Loop Diagrams (CLDs)
  Lecturer(s): Merel van der Wal

Part 3: Anticipate

• The Future as your Guide: Decision-Making Under Uncertainty
  Lecturer(s): Vincent Marchau

• Navigating Uncertainty: The Power of Scenario Development
  Lecturer(s): Vincent Marchau

• Scenario Tutorial 01: Scenario Development
  Lecturer(s): Merel van der Wal & Vincent Marchau

• Scenario Tutorial 02: Wind-Tunneling
  Lecturer(s): Merel van der Wal & Vincent Marchau

Part 4: Advise

• From Idea to Action: How to Implement Business Model Innovation
  Lecturer(s): Stefan Breet

• Consulting Hour
  Lecturer(s): Stefan Breet, Merel van der Wal, and Vincent Marchau